This is the Marble Arch Mound. Or was. It's in the process of being dismantled. It was erected in 2021 as a tourist attraction to try to entice people downtown again during/after the pandemic. It was supposed to be an artificial hill with a scenic platform on top for looking out over central London. It was a massive and expensive failure. At first they tried charging people to go up but the view was actually blocked by tall trees across the road and the turf covering the mound dried up and shrank. Anywho. So they stopped charging but people still didn't go up and it ended up being a huge target of jokes and finger pointing. Oh well.

This is a most beautiful bookshop. All bookshops are wonderful and London is packed with them but THIS is something else. It's the first Daunt Bookshop, a chain of stores specializing in travel books but they carry every genre. I could spend much too much time and money in there. I behaved very well and only bought 2 books.

I took a tour of Westminster Abbey today. It was very good. Our guide was hilarious and knew all sorts of wonderful and scandalous stories, none of which I can remember, but I thoroughly enjoyed. I knew it would be a good tour when I saw the above at the entrance to the Abbey. Some priest has a sense of humor. I am soon off to the pub on the corner. Grace has been in this apartment for 3 years but as that coincided with Covid and closures and such I have yet had the chance to try the place out. I love British pubs. xxoo me

Day 1 in London I got up early to hit the bakeries(scone, whole grain breads) and the bookstores(english books!). Always my first stops. Before heading out I checked the news which made me cry. It's a blustery sunny coooold day and somehow the sun here is so much brighter than elsewhere, probably because it's so rare. I got back and checked the news again which made me soil my pants so I think I need to stop. Last night we went to the theater to see Come From Away, the musical about the 7000 airline passengers stuck in Newfoundland after 9/11. It was a fabulous show but felt a little too close to home with what is happening in Europe. This morning the news is only worse so I made a donation to CARE and we went for a long walk in Richmond, an area in southern London where Ted Lasso takes place. We're back now and again watching the news. It's not getting better. xxoo me

It's been a cold winter. And dry. Yesterday we hiked in the mountains with our "snowshoe" group. No snowshoeing to do this year as it hasn't significantly rained or snowed in well over 2 months. Very worrisome. The trails are covered in 2 feet of dried leaves that should be nicely rotting and instead are setting up the mountains for some terrible summer fires. We walked up and down for about twelve miles in glorious sunshine. In the more protected and full sun areas the heather, forsythia, primrose and daffodils were in bloom. I can't wait for spring! MIL has given up going to the church rectory to record the week's deaths. But as she must keep up on this vital information, we've had to come up with new outlets. Every Thursday is market day so we make a weekly stop to see the notices on the town's bulletin board but often times, as she always points out, the boards have not been updated. They will still show the same ole dead people from the weeks before. Consequently, GP has begun to check the town's website daily and calls MIL with the names of the newly deceased. She needs to know the name, the age and their origin. She'll then tell us if she knew them and how or if they were not originally from town in which case these poor dead folk were unimportant "outsiders". Good gad. I hope I don't go before her! I sure as Hell don't want her writing my obit. The stories she tells us are hilarious and sad as they show the most unkind sides of humanity including hers! The hugely aging population here has led to an influx of eastern european women to act as care-givers as Italians either can't or won't do it. No longer do extended families live communally. The old bachelor uncle is visited twice a year by relatives waiting for the farm to be handed down. Then he hires a gal from Slovakia who cares for him for years visiting her own 2 children only on Christmas and Easter. When the old guy dies and leaves everything to his carer, everyone here is outraged. I said good for her. She earned it. That opinion didn't go down well. Then there is the Sicilian family, (the older generation is still living a civil war here and sicilians are lesser beings), who found a place in a low income nursing home for their ancient mother even though those are very difficult to get into. But those Sicilians have their wily ways having taken all of the jobs in the civil service where they get decent pay for little work and have "connections". Hmmm. Note MIL would have been thrilled had GP chosen a career in the postal service or city offices instead of something she neither understands nor wants to. On another depressing aging note, with warm weather approaching here, I'm on the look out for a bathingsuit that will not make me LOOK like a 60+ year old woman, tankini's and skirted suits are practically taboo here, but at the same time will not send children off screaming while their parents yell "shield your eyes, shield your eyes!!". Women of all ages and body types wear bikinis to the beach. I am struggling to find one that reaches to my bellybutton thereby holding in that wrinkly flap left over from pregnancy AND that has enough structure up top to keep the boobs from drooping to my knees as gravity intends. I'm having no luck. Leaving for a week in London on Thursday. Yippee! xxoo me